Estimated, calibrated, and optimal interest rate rules are examined for their ability to dampen economic fluctuations caused by random shocks. A tax rate rule is also considered. The results show that the estimated interest rate rule used in the paper is stable for the period beginning in 1954 except for the early Volcker period, although more observations, especially high inflation ones, are n...

n the past, monetary policy options were described in terms of a tradeoff between the unemployment rate and the inflation rate, the so-called Phillips curve. Macroeconomists no longer view the Phillips curve as a viable “policy menu” because its use as such is inconsistent with mainstream macroeconomic theory. In the late 1970s, John Taylor suggested an alternative set of options for policymake...

The impact of oil shocks is analyzed by estimating an augmented Phillips curve on a national, regional and city level in the United States. A significant pass-through to inflation (including all items) is recorded for all regions, while core inflation remains largely muted. The West region has experienced a much lower pass-through than other regions and a few reasons for this are; greater oil e...

This paper critically examines a new literature that supports price-level targeting (PT) over inflation targeting (IT).1 This literature shows that it is better for the central bank (the Bank) to gradually wrestle the price level, rather than the inflation rate, back to the target path. PT provides a firm nominal anchor for expectations, and thereby conditions private sector expectations in a w...

This article derives generalized impulse responses from the estimation of a vector autoregression (VAR) model using monthly data between 1995 and 2005 for Mexico, to examine the inflation–relative price variability (RPV) relationship, and to investigate if remittances could account for the observed relationship. While the positive relationship between inflation and RPV is a robust result, remit...

In this paper the Financial Development Index (FDI) is used to rank 57 of the world’s leading financial systems. Its calculation is based on the following 7 economic pillars: (1) Institutional environment, (2) Business environment, (3) Financial stability, (4) Banking financial services, (5) Non-banking financial services, (6) Financial markets, and (7) Financial access. Pillar (4) is construct...

This paper links two existing but separate literatures. Measures of the markup, inflation and relative price variability (RPV) from annual and quarterly US and UK data are used to examine the relationships among the variables. The results show that two long-run relationships can be identified from the data: a negative relationship between inflation and the markup and a positive relationship bet...

This paper presents out-of-sample inflation forecasting results based on relative price variability and skewness. It is demonstrated that forecasts on long horizons of 1.5-2 years are significantly improved if the forecast equation is augmented with skewness. JEL: E17, E31, C43

In this paper, stochastic simulations of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s new macroeconomic model, FPS, are used to examine the issue of which price index should monetary policy stabilise in a small open economy. Under the class of policy rules considered, targeting a measure of domestic inflation, which does not include the direct effects of exchange rate movements on the price of imported go...